Archive for March, 2011

Residents in southern Patagonia fight government proposal with a general strike (Marianne Klock)

It may be just a small slice of the country’s overall energy pie, but Chile’s Patagonia-based natural gas industry is causing big political problems for first-year President Sebastián Piñera, a billionaire capitalist who is finding out the hard way that dictating energy policy is anything but business as usual. Read the rest of this entry ?

After long lagging behind its Central American neighbors in terms of both electricity production and connectivity, Nicaragua, the largest country in the isthmus, is counting on ambitious – and green-oriented – expansion plans to leapfrog into a position of regional leadership. Read the rest of this entry ?

A catastrophic fire last December in an overcrowded Santiago jailhouse has prompted new calls to reform Chile’s troubled prison system. Hardly the first such incident, the blaze, which killed 81 inmates, is widely regarded as the country’s deadliest. Read the rest of this entry ?